Teaming Experience Reflection Paper

At the end of the semester each of you is required to submit a Teaming Experience Reflection Paper. There will be a dropbox on Blackboard to do this. The dropbox will be open from Thursday, May 1st until Friday, May 9th. Your paper must be submitted as a PDF file. These will be graded by Prof. Zhang and not by your Project Coordinator. You will receive comments from Prof. Zhang and an indication if the paper answers the nine questions well enough. There is no grade for this, but anyone who does not submit an acceptable Teaming Experience Reflection Paper will receive an Incomplete in the course until this is done.

To remind yourself about the things you learned about Teaming principles (specifically the KOLB learning style inventory), you can review Lynne Horngren's Teaming and Collaboration Requirement slides.

The Teaming Experience Reflection Paper should be fairly short. Just answer the 9 questions posed on slide 4 of Lynne's slides:

1. Using the KOLB learning style inventory discuss your contributions to your team. Include discussion of the strengths and areas of weakness in regards to your preferred learning style. Discuss the roles you most like to fulfill while teaming and those that you would like to defer to other team members. Further discuss your insights into the learning styles of your team members, focusing on perceived strengths and weaknesses.
2. What trait or traits regarding learning styles did each team member bring to your team that influenced its functioning either positively or negatively? Give examples of their impact.
3. Who did what on your team? How were roles determined? Did everyone contribute equally? How was this decided?
4. Describe an instance where a team member(s) created an obstacle that had to be overcome in order to allow your team to perform effectively.
5. What stumbling blocks relating to team cohesiveness did you encounter in working on your project? How did you overcome them? How do you believe learning styles impacted your team's ability to work collaboratively together and towards team goals?
6. Did you gain skills in conflict resolution while working on the team? Were you able to use these skills effectively to enhance your team's performance? Illustrate with an example.
7. Did your team struggle with personal agendas? Were you able to work toward a common purpose? How?
8. In your teaming experience, did you gain any insights into how cultural differences have an impact on teamwork? If so, please describe.
9. How might your teaming experience affect your future --- with regard to academic, social, career, and/or personal choices?

A 1-2 page paper with short answers to the above will be fine. This is not meant to be a major writing assignment.

Because of the team project and this paper, CS 40800 satisfies the College of Science Teaming Experience Requirement.